The Kewanee Boilermakers opened the season at warp speed and never looked back Monday night.

The Boilers scored the game’s first 11 points and rolled to a 75-54 win over Sherrard in the first game of the Orion Tip-Off Classic.

“We were pretty hungry,” said Kewanee coach Steve Salisbury. “We started out in our pressure to try to get the game going up and down the floor. We got a couple of steals and got the momentum going.”

The Boilers scored in a variety of ways in the initial blitz — Matt Gustafson with a putback on the offensive glass and a 3-pointer, Dayton Ince with a pair of free throws and Donovan Oliver with a tip, steal and score on a Sherrard inbounds pass.

Kewanee built leads of 25-7 at the quarter and 46-26 at the half.

“I thought in the first quarter we played pretty good man-to-man defense, but in the second quarter I thought we got kind of lax,” said Salisbury. “The thing that worries me most about our team is we gave up three or four rebound buckets in the second quarter and they scored 19 points in the second quarter and that’s way too many.”

The Boilers hit eight 3-pointers in the opening half, including three each from Gustafson and Ince.

“They’re our seniors and our captains. We’re hoping they have that kind of season,” said Salisbury.

Kewanee maintained its lead throughout the third quarter and pushed the margin to as many as 26 points in the final frame.

“We made another good run in the fourth quarter,” said Salisbury. “Dayton kind of took the ball and did a lot of things on his own to make some plays.”

Ince finished with 27 points, followed by Gustafson with 18 and freshman starter Donovan Oliver with 12.

“I was pretty happy with Donovan. He got a little flustered when he got in foul trouble, but he’s a freshman and we’re expecting big things out of him. For his first varsity game I thought he played pretty well,” said Salisbury.

The Boilers will find out where they stand early in the 2012-13 season in their next two outings at Orion — Wednesday against Monmouth-Roseville at 5:30 p.m. and Rockridge at 7 p.m. Friday.

“Coming into this tournament, you know Monmouth-Roseville is here and Rockridge is here. They’re two of the better teams in the state in my opinion,” said Salisbury. “We’re going to work Tuesday preparing for Monmouth-Roseville and we know we’ve got a tough one.”